[Valla, an Italian intellectual, served as the Librarian of the Vatican. His Devero bono, or On Pleasure, takes the form of a letter in which the writer, who identifies himself as an Epicurean, refutes the arguments of a friend who advocates stoicism. The excerpts that follow exemplify the speaker's stance on Epicureanism.']

I believe that if this dispute about the comparative worths of pleasure and virtue should come to the vote of the people, that is, of the world (for this is a worldly contest), and if the issue were whether the primacy in wisdom should be awarded to either the Epicureans or the Stoics, then the vote for our side would be so large that you would seem to have been not only rejected but also branded with the ultimate disgrace. I pass over the mortal danger that you would run with such an abundance of enemies. For by the gods and also by men, what is the point of temperance, thrift, and continence unless we get something useful from such actions? Otherwise, the resultant condition is mournful, hideous, similar to constant illness, displeasing to human bodies, hateful to the ears, and, finally, something that ought to be harried out of all states into deserts and the farthest solitudes. …

On this account, I can afford to take less trouble in considering the other half of our present discussion, that is, the matter of what the Stoics call tranquillity of mind, maintaining as they do that it is a kind of diadem for the virtuous soul. I cannot see why this mental or spiritual tranquillity should not fit the goal that we have established. For as contemplation generates joy in the mind, so tranquillity and safety keep passion or trouble from entering: they open the way to pleasure, so to speak, and preserve what pleasure has been received. It does not escape me how much some people are raising this argument, and how often they repeat that nothing is more disturbed, anxious, and unhappy than a depraved mind. They mention many people in this connection and describe their loves at length: Phalaris,¹³² Dionysius [of Syracuse], and others like them. …

How much better a man Epicurus was in this respect is sufficiently expressed by his having considered the day of his death to be a happy day by virtue of the memory of his wellspent and happy previous life. This was not the way with Vergil's Dido or Lucan's Caesar: they hoped for fame based on their deeds, which will never confer advantage upon the dead. On the contrary, that old man of Quintilian's is made to say: "I confess that as my son was dying I received some solace from the circumstance that the unhappy boy had lived just as he wished, for his short life was cheerful and happy." Because this kind of consolation cannot alter, it is more genuine than fame, which can. There are those who mock the good consciences and mental peace and tranquillity of us Epicureans, as though, after the fashion of Orestes, the unremitting firebrands of the Furies had a permanent seat in our countenances and stood ready for battle in our eyes, although in fact these critics can see in an Epicurean the serene heart of a man who gives thanks for his past life, regards the advancing Fates with calm and cheerful eye, and is not any more hostile to death than to the shades of night after sunset. This, I say, is to live well, to live happily; this is a good and happy death. …

Perhaps you now ask me to speak of Pythagoras' and Plato's doctrine of the transmigration of souls from one body to another, which Vergil followed in these words:

That they may start wishing to return again to the body.

Neither Porphyry nor Apuleius, two of the greatest Platonists, dared to support this doctrine against the philosophers who railed at it. A little later, Macrobius, also one of the greatest Platonists, who borrowed many things from Plato's Timaeus and from Plotinus, discussed this doctrine so anxiously and hesitantly that he seems almost to be walking on tiptoe through thorns. Marcus Terentius Varro had previously argued against the doctrine, speaking as in a dream in the fashion of the prophet Tiresias, as Horace says:

Whatever I predict either will happen or will not. …

According to my Epicurus, however, nothing remains after the dissolution of the living being, and in the term "living being" he included man just as much as he did the lion, the wolf, the dog, and all other things that breathe. With all this I agree. They eat, we eat; they drink, we drink; they sleep, and so do we. They engender, conceive, give birth, and nourish their young in no way different from ours. They possess some part of reason and memory, some more than others, and we a little more than they. We are like them in almost everything: finally, they die and we die—both of us completely. But we shall have knowledge of this—or rather we shall have no knowledge—when we have departed from this life. As for now, however, let us serve what we know and what is the only good in life, pleasure. …